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Welcome to July's Case of the Month! This month we look at a very common problem, one that probably affects 90% of our pets at some point in their lives. |
WHAT GLAMOR?
HISTORY
What people may not realize about veterinary medicine is that, in addition to being a challenge because of the medicine and sometimes because of the lack of cooperation of the patients, sometimes it's just plain gross! Georgie was a young (about 6 months old) dog who had been healthy for the several months that he'd lived with his family. However, recently he'd developed a problem. He had diarrhea. He was having accidents on the floor - in the living room, in the kitchen, in the bedroom - you get the picture. It was quite a mess. His owners were exasperated with having to clean up the mess, and he didn't seem all that happy, either.
PHYSICAL FINDINGS
Georgie's exam was pretty normal. He was a little sore around his hind end, and his intestinal tract had a lot of gas in it. His intestines also felt a little thicker than normal, which often suggests some kind of inflammation.
TESTING
Fortunately, Georgie's parents had followed our instructions and brought one of Georgie's bowel movements. It was very runny and smelled terrible. To further examine it, we put some of the sample into a special salt solution to create what we call a fecal float. When we examine a float, any parasite eggs that might be present tend to float to the surface and stick to our microscope slide. Here's what we saw:
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What you're seeing are roundworm eggs. Roundworms are present in the systems of most puppies and kittens, but don't always cause obvious signs of disease. Also, like Georgie, affected pets rarely have visible worms int their stool.
TREATMENT
We were able to give Georgie a medication that quickly killed the worms in his system. We also had his owners clean up any feces they could find in the yard, to keep the eggs from developing and re-infecting him. He's never had a problem with worms since.
DISCUSSION
One of the most common problems that pets have is diarrhea. In fact, we examined statistics over a 2-year period and found that the number one cause of a pet requiring emergency care was vomiting and/or diarrhea. Worms are one of several causes. The most common types of worms are:
In addition, there are almost uncounted causes of diarrhea other than worms, including:
In vet school we used to joke that we'd been told veterinary medicine was all fun and glamor, and that no one told us we'd have to deal with something like diarrhea. That argument never seemed to get us out of cleaning any dirtied cages. Oh, well... See you next month!
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